Basically, instead of simply removing the topic of homosexuality from schools like the last failed bill, they also want teachers and school officials to alert a child's parents if they have reason to believe their child may be gay.

The GOP hidden objective: narc on gay kids in hopes their Christian parents reprimand them for it. Genius!

I hope this bill passes just so we can have a homo trial in the same vein as the monkey trial.

I don't doubt it. I feel genuine sympathy for any young person growing up in the so-called "Bible Belt" of the US. Even if they're not homosexuals, atheists or of any other religious persuasion than Christian, they're potentially being brainwashed with all kinds of ridiculous ideas that aren't emblematic of how the world should be thinking in the 21st Century.

I look forward to the day that the people who come up with this kind of legislation have all died off, being replaced by a generation who aren't trapped in the "The bible says this is bad, so that's that" mentality. Or is that too ambitious and optimistic?

If that kind of future happens it will be a slow replacement. There are a lot of young people who would gladly enact crap like this. Garbage like that seems to happen the more a culture keeps to itself too. It's really, really hard to make everyone open minded and worldly. :(

Aliotroph? said:If that kind of future happens it will be a slow replacement. There are a lot of young people who would gladly enact crap like this. Garbage like that seems to happen the more a culture keeps to itself too. It's really, really hard to make everyone open minded and worldly. :(

Making everyone open-minded is a lot easier when the rest of the country is marching to a different beat. Will shit like go away completely, no. But as the gay rights movement keeps on trucking and the rest of the country bends accordingly, movements like this will shrink to the point of irrelevance at the political level. It happened with the civil rights movement, it'll happen with this.

Making everyone open-minded is a lot easier when the rest of the country is marching to a different beat. Will shit like go away completely, no. But as the gay rights movement keeps on trucking and the rest of the country bends accordingly, movements like this will shrink to the point of irrelevance at the political level. It happened with the civil rights movement, it'll happen with this.

While this is true, it's still important to fight bigotry when it presents itself. I'm not saying you need to go to rallys and stuff like that (unless you want to), but something as simple as telling someone to watch their language when they say something bluntly racist/homophobic/transphobic/xenophobic can go a long way towards helping make the world a bit better, a little piece at a time.

I hope I live to see the day the bible belt finally gets its act together.

In a similar vein to what I just said in the "dIsraeli Fears" thread, I vote we bomb the whole Bible Belt out of existence (we may need sacrifice Xaser to the greater good) and erect solar panels in it's place. Good, clean electricty/power, less wars/bigotry/religion, etc.

I wonder what a school bully thinks about this, and what ideas he has to abuse this to get rid of the "geeks" he doesn't like.

Another thing is that this bill has ambiguous language that sounds like something that is a good thing, but because of the circumstances around the bill, sound pretty damn evil.

For example, let's take the language out of context and put the "gay snitch" wording into a hypothetical "mental health" bill:

If a student is engaging in, or may be at risk of engaging in, behavior injurious to the physical or mental health and well- being of the student or another person, school officials may talk to the students or their parents about the issue, and what course of action to take.

Sounds common sense, right? That makes a hell of a lot more sense. That wording alone makes sense for a "Classroom Protection Act". But that's not the intention of the proposed bill. This is an ideological bill with weasel wording to sound less threatening than it is. What amazes me is how they can use such harmless prose that sounds like common-sense legislation, and turn it into a "snitch bill", and then point to the wording in an attempt to silence critics and claim they're overreacting, and that this is needed legislation.

So I think it's not hyperbole anymore. It's pretty safe to say that, outside the beltway, the GOP are pretty much domestic terrorists.

A lot of this stuff sounds like it's straight out of a plot line to the next godawful Ben Stiller film. It may be 20 years, but when this generation of backwoods lawmakers fades is a day where I will pop open the nearest bottle of brew and sip in celebration.

I consider myself lucky that I lived in a suburb of St. Louis. Even though it was a socially conservative, twatty sort of place, there were a decent amount of people willing to practice tolerance... At least to homosexuality, anyways. Plus, if I ever needed to remind myself of how privileged and lucky I was, all I needed to do was take a drive on Grand.

The Republicans are trying to remind everyone that they're the badguys to distract from the bigger issues.. like the NDAA, drone strikes, and from the shit that Obama is doing in the Middle East. Oh yeah, and the fact that they're trying to clamp down on the internet.

The fight for liberty and economic freedom is like fighting a war on different fronts!

I do love the intentionally vague wording. Oh sure, it sounds harmless, but let's face it, merely the act of being gay in a state like Tennessee is likely to get the shit beaten out of you, so doesn't that alone qualify for notifying the parents? This whole thing is just so absurd. And if you truly are worried about kids hurting themselves, the law already requires anyone working in education to notify parents and/or authorities if they believe a student is in danger.

And heck, if you want to keep kids safe, you can't restrict what they're allowed to talk about with trusted adults. The world doesn't work that way. All you're doing is demanding that LGBT students suffer in silence. What the hell!?

The problem is that you're approaching this from the point of view of someone trying to actually help children. There's not really anything in this bill that suggests that the creators have any intention of doing so.